- In this video, I'm comparing the $400
set of Nano hearing aids with a cheap, $20 amplifier off of Alibaba Coming up. (modern, active music) Hi guys. Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Anthem, Arizona. And on this channel, I cover a bunch of hearing-related information to help me you a better-informed consumer. So if you're into that, make sure you hit that subscribe button. And don't forget to click the bell to receive a notification
every time I post a new video. If you've ever gone on Facebook after doing an internet search for anything regarding hearing aids, you have most likely been
bombarded by hearing aid ads by a company named Nano
Hearing Technologies. Now, according to their website, they manufacture advanced hearing aids that auto adjust to your hearing loss without the need of a hearing test. They also claim that they work for 98.7% of individuals
with hearing loss, and that they have over 3000 reviews without a single one or two star review, and all of this for devices
that will only cost you $400 for a pair. Yet upon looking at the
hearing aids on their website, I thought they looked strikingly familiar to other hearing aids that I've seen on a website called Alibaba.com. In fact, they look almost identical to the $18-$20 hearing amplifiers
that are sold on Alibaba. Now Alibaba.com is a website
that connects suppliers from around the world with
distributors who want to sell those products to consumers. They are cheap products
that get made in places like China and India, and they get rebranded and sold to you. So I went ahead and ordered
both sets of these devices so I could directly compare
the Nano hearing aids to these Alibaba hearing aids and see if Nano really makes some of the most advanced
hearing aids in the world, or if they're just another
piece of online junk. All right. Let's see what they have
inside of the Nano box. All right. So, it looks like we have some
kind of documents in here. Basically the user guide to explain how these devices work. Couple other documents,
kind of showing you a few different things, some discounts for either
friends or yourself for more devices from Nano, but a bunch of just
different paperwork in there. We won't get into that too much. And then we have the actual devices here so let's open this up, I ordered one device, and let's see what we got. Oh, look at that. They sent two devices. Well that's perfect, so they did have a buy
one get one free sale. I didn't actually participate
in that buy one get one free but they sent me two devices anyway, so that's perfect.
(crinkling plastic) Almost look like they, no matter what, they just send you two. But let's see if we can get in here and check these things out. So pretty standard looking amplifier that you would order online. In terms of build quality,
it looks pretty rough. This is the right one. Those battery doors look like they have a little bit of warping of the actual, I don't know if you can
see that in the camera, but a little bit of warping
of the battery door. They don't actually close
very, they don't close flush, on either the right one or the left one. Oh, there we go. That one actually closed. But nonetheless, they have a very simple, this is a volume adjustment right here, this right here is the single
microphone that it has, and it does come with a
variety of different domes to fit different ear
canal sizes and shapes. (crinkling plastic) So they have a variety of different ones here that they send, but in general, this is
the one that comes with it, so there we go. And then they also have a
cleaning tool and a screwdriver inside of there as well, so
the cleaning tool of course is for cleaning the devices,
and then that screwdriver is essentially for adjusting
that volume wheel on there. The other thing that Nano sends
you is a box of batteries, size ten batteries, and it looks like there's
36 batteries in here, which would last you a
couple months, most likely. But that's it. Pretty simple stuff. They send you just the hearing devices, some batteries, a cleaning
tool and an adjustment tool. And let's check out the one
that we got from Alibaba. I have a left ear inside of this box that I'm going to take out and it looks almost identical
to a Nano hearing aid. It kind of has the same build quality, has the same volume lever, has the same microphone, even has the same removal
string with the blue color on the end of the removal string, and then it comes with a variety
of different domes as well. It also comes with a cleaning brush and volume adjustment screwdriver and if we actually compare
these side by side, (hearing aid dropping into plastic box) Oh. If we actually compare these side by side, you can see that they
are essentially identical in every way, except for the branding that is on there. The one in my right hand says Nano. The one in my left hand is some name that I can't really read,
that's the one from Alibaba. So, the other thing here
is that the cleaning tools are exactly the same, and even
packaged the exact same way. So it's really interesting
to see how similar these are in terms of build. Let's go ahead and check out and see if they actually perform any differently, or if they perform exactly the same. All right, so now that you
know that these devices look identical to each other, I'm gonna go ahead and take these Nanos and actually put them inside of my ear to give you perspective
of what they look like when wearing them. I have some really big ear canals, so these actually go
pretty deep into my ears. The one thing that I do notice is that I get really bad
occlusion effect with these, which is that phenomenon
that happens when you plug your ears with
something and you talk and your own voice is really loud to yourself, but they do go in pretty well. They're kinda comfortable, in a way. And the thing that I
really don't like about it is that they have these
little strings on them, these removable strings, that they have actually
colored red and blue, to indicate the sides. Why they don't make them
clear, I have no idea, but it looks like I have little antennas stickign out of my ear, which would be very weird going
up and having a conversation with someone who doesn't know me. Now, look and feel are
different than performance, so I'm gonna test the performance of these Nano hearing aids up against these cheap Alibaba amplifiers. The first thing that I'm gonna do is electro acoustic analysis, using my otometrics hearing
instrument test box. This will allow me to measure
the diagnostics of these hearing aids with an extremely
high level of accuracy. By doing a diagnostic
test with this equipment, I can directly compare the
output of the Nano hearing aids with the Alibaba amplifiers, in a very controlled environment that eliminates
variability of measurement. First, I will run the Nano hearing aid through the diagnostic testing sequence. Everything started out well as I set the device to full on gain and ran the 90 decibel
and 50 decibel pure tones. But then an unexpected issue occurred when trying to test the device
at reference test settings, which requires the reduction of volume inside of the green area on this scale. It seems that even though the
devices have volume wheels, they only have two volume settings, maximum volume and minimum volume. No matter how much I
adjusted the volume wheel, you can see that I either
had the volume all the way up on the right hand side of the scale or all the way down on the
left hand side of the scale. Since I couldn't get it
in the middle green area, I was not able to accurately measure the reference test settings
for a 60 decibel input, nor was I able to accurately record the total harmonic
distortion of this device. Nonetheless, after completing the testing with the Nano hearing aid, I was able to repeat this test sequence with the Alibaba amplifier. As we run through the test sequence again with the Alibaba amplifier, we can see the striking similarity between the results of the Nano devices and the Alibaba devices. Even the exact same issues
with the volume control occurred with the Alibaba devices, just like they did with the Nanos. Here is a side-by-side output comparison between the Nano devices on the left and the Alibaba devices on the right. As you can see, the numbers
are almost identical, almost as if I was testing
the exact same device. Next, I set up the otometrics oracle probe microphone measurement equipment to perform real ear
measurement with both devices to measure how they
perform inside of an actual user's ear canal. This will also allow us
to see if these devices are capable of matching the
prescription for a normal sloping-to-moderate sensory
neural hearing loss, which is a very easy type of hearing loss prescription to match. As we run through the test sequence, we can see that the Nano hearing aids, when set to their lowest volume level, are providing amplification which is indicated by
the solid purple line. The solid black line is the
sound that is being played from the external otometrics speaker and amplified by the device
inside of the user's ear. We can see that the prescriptive targets, which are indicated by the hash mark line, is not being matched by the
output of the Nano hearing aid, which would indicate a poor
fit for this individual and their hearing loss. When we increase the volume to maximum, now remember, there is no in the middle volume adjustment for
the Nano hearing devices, we can see that it is a massive
amount of amplification, indicated by the solid turquoise line that could have the
potential to further damage this individual's hearing ability. After testing the Nano device, I then set up the user to
test the Alibaba device. The red curve indicates the
output of the Alibaba amplifier at the lower volume setting and the green curve indicates the output of the Alibaba amplifier at
the highest volume setting. When we overlap these curves
with the curves recorded with the Nano hearing aids, we can see that they are
almost identical to each other. This indicates that these devices not only look identical to each other, but they also perform
identical to each other, and neither one of them are
capable of exactly matching this moderate hearing loss prescription. All right guys. I don't really even know what
else to test on these things. I mean, the build quality is identical, the feel of them is identical, the look of them is identical, the performance of them through
objective test measurements are identical. In fact, if I didn't have
the name stamped on these hearing devices, I would have
no clue which one are the Nano devices and which one are
the cheap Alibaba amplifiers. Not only did the objective
measurements come out nearly identical between these
devices, but subjectively they both have equally
horrific sound quality, and I would be just blown
away if anyone else thought anything different. Now if you watch my channel, you know I try to remain
as unbiased as possible. I don't care whether you
get hearing aids from me. I don't care whether you go down the road and get your hearing aids from Costco or another hearing care provider. I don't even care if you go
online to buy hearing aids. As long as you're an informed consumer, when making the decision to go whatever route you decide to go, but for these Nano hearing aids and these Alibaba hearing aids, I couldn't in good conscience recommend that anyone even try them. That's it for this video. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section below. If you like the video, please share it, and if you want to see other
videos just like this one, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. I'll see you next time. (modern, upbeat music)
